1981. Eighteen-year-old Nicolas Van der Swert leaves home to start his compulsory national service in the South African Army, his platoon being led by Sergeant Brand, a brutal and homophobic military veteran, who targets the most sensitive and vulnerable recruits, and when two young man are found having sex, Brand ruthless humiliates them, calling them ‘Moffies’, a derogatory slang term for gays. One struggling recruit, a favoured target for Brand’s abuse, commits suicide. Getting ready to return home on leave, Nick is surprised when another recruit, Dylan Stassen, forced to stay at camp when his leave warrant is denied, kisses him. When Nick returns from leave he finds that Dylan has vanished from the camp.

Eight months later and Nick’s platoon are preparing to be sent the the Angolan border to fight the Communist Angolans, but Nick discovers that, on Brand’s orders, Dylan has been sent to the camp’s Unit 22, a mental health facility with a brutal reputation, and he finds that Dylan is not allowed to have visitors. Once in the combat zone, the platoon come under heavy enemy fire, Nick seeing one of his friends killed and having to kill an Angolan soldier at close quarters.

At the end of his service period, Nick visits Dylan, who is now back at his family home. the two men go to the beach and swim, talking about their very different experiences in service, but Nick is uncertain as to Dylan and his motives, the young man obviously still feeling the strain of his time in military incarceration.

Based on the 2006 autobiographical novel Moffie by Harrismith-born writer André Carl van der Merwe, largely based on incidents he recorded in his diaries during his period of conscription in the South African Defence Forces, this fourth feature by Oliver Hermanus (Shirley Adams / The Endless River) deals with the central character, here called Nicolas Van der Swert (Kai Luke Brummer – TV’s Deutschland ’86), and his struggles both to adapt to the rigorous military life, personified by the brutal and ruthless Sergeant Brand (Hilton Pelser – The Kissing Booth), but also to hide the fact that he is gay, illegal in the country at the time, made all the more difficult when another recruit, Strassen (Ryan de Villiers) becomes attracted to him.

At that time the country was fighting a war against Russian-backed Communist Angolan troops at their shared border, causing all fit South African white males between the ages of 17 and, remarkably, 60, to complete two years of compulsory military service, followed by annual training camps once their two years was served, and no nationals were exempt.

Nicholas has long known he is different but that has to stay hidden during his time in the forces, especially after seeing what the sadistic Brand does to two young men who are found together, and the war on the front line, shown in brief and jarring sudden flashes of violence, smashing the carefully built up tension of the platoon being on patrol on the border, not only causes more tension and stress but conversely gives him a temporary identity, ‘one of the boys’ of the unit, although he knows that the discovery of his relationship with Strassen could be as dangerous as the Angolans they repeatedly clash with, especially after finding Brand has had Strassen sent to a harsh and relentless military mental health facility.

Pelser’s terrifying performance as Brand inevitably brings back memories of R. Lee Ermey’s unforgettable Gunnery Sgt. Hartman in Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (’87), Hermanus acknowledging that the film’s mileau and setting inevitably draws comparisons, but Brand perfectly reflects the wrath of the military, and South African society in general, towards the outsider, but as Sight & Sound noted, ‘Although Brummer is well cast as Nick, the mask his character has to wear means his character can only express a limited range of emotions’.

Hermanus’s film, although focusing on Nicholas, also makes the point that at that time in the country to be anything but a white Christian heterosexual was to be regarded with, at best, suspicion and at worst hostility and outright violence. To be different was to to be seen as dangerous, as was everyone from gays to atheists, non-racists, pacifists, left-wingers and anyone who didn’t share the apartheid hive mind and values.

Playing in a number of film festivals after debuting in Venice in 2019, Moffie has played events as varied as London, Tromsø and Guadalajara, along the way winning the Mermaid Award at the Thessaloniki FF and the Dublin Film Critics Special Jury Award at, unsurprisingly, Dublin, and the fact that it was partially backed by the South African Department Of Trade And Industry shows just how much that country has changed.